


Unwild

by Author_of_Kheios



Series: Mer-Quarium [5]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe, CyberLife spinoff called AquaLife, Gen, Jericrew begins, mermaid au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-30
Updated: 2020-04-30
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:02:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23934244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Author_of_Kheios/pseuds/Author_of_Kheios
Summary: Simon becomes a mer because of the kindness of a lonely old lady, but greed lands him in AquaLife praying that she's alright.
Relationships: Josh & North & Simon (Detroit: Become Human), Simon (Detroit: Become Human) & Original Character(s)
Series: Mer-Quarium [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1476737
Comments: 6
Kudos: 10





	Unwild

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Jukraft](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jukraft/gifts).



> what dis? owo more dbh? owo
> 
> that's right y'all, have some more of this funky little world i'm building with Jukraft! she hasn't given up on this universe yet, so neither can i. uwu

~

Humans and merfolk are not so different... We both crave affection and caring kindness. Did you know? It is actually impossible for a mer to become... well, a _mer_ , unless he or she feels safe and loved. A marine creature with the potential to become a mer will search endlessly at the beginning of its life for a person or people that make it feel safe, and oftentimes, that will come from another mer. This is how families are built, and sometimes those families will gather together in clans, creating entire communities where mer can come to be. But every now and then, there are no mer communities around, no one to bond with. Occasionally, a potential mer will even find itself surrounded by humans, in fish tanks, or ponds, or aquariums. If that environment is loving enough, the mer can still come to be. A perfect example of this is AquaLife's own octopus mer, W.

Dr. Joshua Kamski, PhD

~

She loves feeding the fish.

Her husband was a fisherman, an old-fashioned man who went out alone on his little trawler and dragged his nets all up and down the New England coast, sometimes leaving for weeks at a time. She thought nothing of his absence one spring until police came to have her identify his body. After that, she started spending all her time on the beach by her house, sitting on the end of the pier and idly dropping crumbs and worms and bugs into the water.

It began as her coping mechanism, to handle the grief of losing her beloved husband to the cruel, unforgiving ocean, and has long since become her way of connecting with him; she only feels at peace on the end of the pier.

Some fish return regularly, remembering the location as a place to get food, and she's named the ones she recognises. The bluefish with a streak of pretty green scales is Layla. The pair of scup that always fight over worms are Jenny and John. The lone flying fish unusually far north is Simon. The giant tautog that has eaten a couple of the smaller fish before is Tiny Tim. There are others, of course, but some of them aren't easily distinguishable, and some just don't return quite as often.

To her great surprise, Simon is missing one day, and in his place... is a mer.

She recognises what he is, of course; tales of mermaids and mermen are exceedingly common amongst those of the fishing community.

He's so tiny... She can't help but think of her son, the only child she was ever able to conceive, who died before he ever left the hospital.

She doesn't intend to get attached; mer are still wild, after all. But she has a soft spot in her heart, an old wound still tender from the loss of her child, rubbed raw by the loss of her husband, so she feeds him. She makes sure he stays warm through the winter, even carrying him inside to her bathtub when a winter storm threatens to freeze over the entire bay. She answers every question he asks as he learns to speak. She gives him toys made of driftwood. She teaches him how to read and write using markers and dry erase boards. She explains the birds and the bees.

She raises him as her own. She loves him. And he loves her.

He brings her fish from beyond to bay to sell in the markets. He gifts her with colourful pieces of coral. He lights up her days with cheerful stories made up on the spot. He takes her swimming when she can handle it and the days are long and sunny and hot. He splashes her lightly when she can't, and still the sun is relentless. He holds her hand on the days when her aging body requires a nap on warm afternoons, dozing beside her until his skin and scales need wetting.

He takes care of her. Because he loves her. And she loves him.

They have each other, and that's enough.

~

"I saw something today," she greets him when she returns from the market, gingerly easing herself down into the worn wooden chair nailed to the end of the pier. He pulls himself up onto the pier and crosses his arms over her lap, smiling warmly.

"You see something everyday, don't you?" he teases. "Unless you've been going blind and you haven't told me."

"No," she laughs lightly, running bony fingers through his soft wet hair. "I saw an ad in the paper I used to wrap up the fish you brought me."

"An ad for what?" he asks curiously.

"Information," she answers, picking a piece of Irish moss from fine waves and idly flicking it back into the water. "About mers. There's an aquarium in Detroit, Michigan that was originally built to be a marine life sanctuary and now acts as a sort of... search and rescue facility for merfolk." He perks up, interested, and she smiles. "I hear the latest addition is an incredibly smart young manta ray mer, even smarter than you." She gently taps his nose and they both laugh. "He's been educating them about mer culture and history, in exchange for learning about human history."

"Wow... What kind of information do they want?"

"Mostly it seems they just want to know if mer are being mistreated. They're asking anyone who knows about captive mer to call them, and even offered a reward for information that results in the relocation of abused mers."

"It's sad to think that so many of us are treated so poorly," he sighs, rubbing his cheek against her knee.

"Mm." She watches him for a long moment, still gently stroking his hair. Then she stops and lays her hand on his sun-warmed shoulder. "Are you happy, Simon?"

"Of course I am," he answers, raising his head to frown at her. "Why wouldn't I be?"

"Don't you want to be with your own kind?" she pushes.

"I-" He shakes his head. "No, I want to be with you." But his hesitation is enough, and a terse silence falls between them.

"...You belong out there," she says quietly, watching the distant line where the sea meets the sky.

"I don't _want_ to be out there," he persists. "I have sometimes wondered what it would be like to live with other mers, but I don't want to leave you."

That brings a soft smile to her face, smoothing away worried creases, and she caresses his cheek, leaning down to kiss his forehead.

"Such a sweet boy..."

"You're not... going to send me away, are you?" he asks uneasily, gripping her skirts.

"No, dear; I'm happy with you here." Relieved, he settles on her lap again, and neither says another word for the rest of the afternoon.

~

They come at sunrise, when Simon brings in an armful of shad and herring for her to sell at the market today. He's helping her sort and wrap them when he spots the trio of men approaching the pier.

"And here I thought you'd never ask anyone to help you get these to market," he teases.

"What's that, dear?" she looks at him with a blank smile, unaware of the men coming closer. Simon's smile fades with his humour as he realises she didn't invite them to help her transport the fish. Ducking under the water, he goes down and around, getting the swimming start he needs to breach the surface and land on the pier between her and them. Baring his teeth, he hisses viciously in warning, ready to protect her.

"Watch it!" one of the men warns, stopping the other two. She notices them then and stands, frowning.

"Albert? What are you boys doing down here so early?" she asks. "Shouldn't you be at the dock, prepping your boat?"

"We just want the mer, Mrs. Harrison," says the one who spoke before.

"What for?" Her frown deepens, and she lays a hand on Simon's head.

"Just step back and let us take him, okay?" another says shortly.

"Easy, Davies..." Albert cautions.

"I don't know what you boys were hoping to accomplish, but you should get a move on now," she suggests coolly. "You're going to mess up your schedules."

"We're not leaving without that mer," the third replies firmly.

"...Simon, I think it's time for you to go now, dear," she says, stroking his hair once more and nudging him toward the water without looking away from the men.

"No," he growls, for the benefit of the men, who shift back, uneasy.

"They want _you_ , Simon," she points out quietly, pushing him more insistently. "The safest thing for all of us is for you to leave, now."

"But..." Simon looks up at her, worried.

A mistake.

Taking advantage of his distraction, the men surge forward; Albert snatches her out of the way while the other two pounce on Simon, one pinning down his tail while Davies grapples him to the pier. It's a short but intense fight, marked with hissing and shouting, thrashing and struggling, and ends quickly when Davies stabs a massive needle into Simon's flank. In a matter of seconds, he's barely conscious.

"What did you do??" she screams, trying to get to him.

"Mrs. Harrison, please," Albert coaxes, gentle but firm, and not letting her go.

"No! Don't touch h- touch-" She can't breathe. Her chest aches, and her vision is blurring. She tries to speak again, and all that leaves her lips is a breathy mumble.

"Mrs. Harrison?" Her legs buckle, and Albert shouts, catching her and lowering her to the pier. "Shit! Davies, call an ambulance! Jackson, go get the truck and load up the mer; we have to get it out of here before anyone else sees it. Hurry!"

Simon can't move, but damned if he doesn't try, stretching toward her and flicking his tail weakly, desperate to help but fast fading into the fuzzy blur consuming his thoughts.

_Please be okay..._

~

"How is he?" Elijah asks, stepping up to the isolation tank. In the far corner, the large, stunning silver flying fish mer is lying listlessly in a loop on the sand, staring into the distance with dead eyes. If not for the occasional blink or flick of fins, he'd worry the poor thing is truly dead.

"Not good," Orchid sighs, placing her hand lightly on the glass. "Even Martin wasn't so depressed during his recovery."

"Allen just sent me a report," Elijah states. "They returned the money, but there's still no word on the old lady. The hospital is refusing to speak with anyone but close relatives, and apparently she has none. Parents are obviously out of the picture, she never had siblings, her husband was killed in a massive storm over twenty years ago, and the only child she ever had died of a complication during the birthing process." He nods toward the mer. "He's her only family now."

"Are you going to return him?" Orchid asks, looking up at him with sharp dark eyes. He doesn't answer right away.

"...I don't think that's wise," he replies finally, choosing his words carefully. "I see now that it was a mistake to advertise the way that I did; returning him now, with the old lady in the hospital, will only make him a target for this to happen again. I don't think I can return him at all."

"He's still wild, Elijah. North and W are tank-raised, and Martin and Josh may have chosen to stay, but this boy was born and raised in the ocean. You can't keep him in a tank, even one as big as we have."

"Is he truly wild, though?" Elijah asks pointedly, turning to face her. "You've read Joshua's dissertation; mer can only exist where there is someone to take care of them. A family. That woman _is_ his family. He has no one else. Turning him loose in the middle of the ocean with no family or clan to protect him would be a death sentence."

"And keeping him caged isn't?" Orchid returns fiercely. She stares hard at him for a moment longer and then sighs heavily. "You're the boss, Eli; I can't tell you what to do. But make sure you really, truly think about this before you go making decisions."

"I have," Elijah says without hesitation. "I haven't _stopped_ thinking about it since he arrived. If that lady dies, so does he. Martin and his sister might have been the only mer in their family, but they had more than each other, and now he has W. This kid has no one else. He needs to be socialised. Even if I could find a clan of mer and return him to the ocean with them, he'd be an outcast; he'd never fit in. He's safer here than anywhere else."

Orchid eyes him for a minute, brow cocked.

"You really have thought about this, haven't you?" she muses.

"You've nagged me enough about doing what's best for them," he smirks.

"Good to see it's getting through," she scoffs, turning back to her desk. "I'll keep him under observation for now. Let me know when you have news about the lady; I'd like to know everything before I talk to him about joining the others."

"You'll know as soon as I do," Elijah promises as he leaves.

~

The moment he sees them, Simon wonders if he'll regret his decision. Two of them are far larger than he is, and the third is a snake with a muscular top half strong enough to crush him.

"Welcome," one smiles; the manta. He shifts closer, but not invasively; his arms are spread in warm invitation, and it helps ease Simon's worry. "My name is Josh. I understand you were raised by a human?"

"Yes," Simon answers softly.

"Did she name you?"

"Simon," he nods.

"Simon," Josh echoes, smile growing. "The listener." He looks like he might say something else, but a small, dark-skinned octopus squirts up and grabs his side, getting his attention. Chuckling, he pulls the young mer into his arms. "This is W, the resident hugger."

The snake snorts in amusement and swims over to take the little one, crooning teasingly at him in a language that feels familiar but that Simon's never heard.

"That's Martin," Josh introduces, handing over W and nodding at the snake. Then he gestures at the last mer, a giant squid who looks like she'd sooner tear off all their heads than greet him. "And the moody one is North. She doesn't like males, so I'd advise you keep your distance, just in case."

"Why don't you like males?" Simon asks her; if he knows the reason, then at least he knows what to avoid. Her sharp gaze narrows suspiciously, and she moves toward him with graceful lethality. He stays as still as he can, hardly daring to breathe as she circles him.

"Would _you_ like the ones who abused you and raised you for entertainment purposes?" she hisses in his ear, sending a shudder down his spine.

"I'm so sorry," he whispers, wishing he was smaller. "No one deserves a life like that." North slides away.

"...Not all of us were lucky enough to have found a loving family," she says simply; maybe it's just Simon's imagination, but she doesn't sound as angry.

"How- How did you change if...?" he asks before he can stop himself. Martin's brows go up, and he shakes his head quickly, but despite the ominous warning, North doesn't whip around and tear him in half. She does go still, and half turns, not quite looking at them, her voice soft with just a hint of sorrow.

"He loved exotic fish."


End file.
